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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Review: Rock & Release (Rock & Release #1-3) by Riley Edgewood

Formerly released as a three-act serial, Rock & Release is now one complete novel.

She wants something easy. What she needs might be something else.

Cassidy
Evans is looking for an escape over her college summer break. And when
one night with a few too many martinis leads her to sexy guitarist, Gage
Logan, she may have found exactly that.

He's hot and he's sweet,
and in the bedroom he's enough to make Cassidy forget her own name.
Multiple times. But as her heart opens to Gage, feelings she's been
trying to avoid slip through, too. Regret over her rocky relationship
with her parents. Pain from her brother's recent death. Guilt over a
fallout with her best friend... As much as she craves Gage, she can't
unlock her heart the way he deserves.

Enter Luca James,
international rock star and lead singer for Gold Rush Standard. Cassidy
can't stand his music. She can't stand his arrogance. And, when he sets
his sights on more than the drinks she serves him, she especially can't
stand how she's drawn to his no-strings-attached flirting.

Soon
Cassidy will have to make a choice: ignore her heart and go after the
carefree life she covets, or stand strong to face a bittersweet reality.

Either way, she risks losing everything she truly wants.

Cassidy's summer break has finally arrived and while her dad has plans for her to start a summer internship at his company, Cassidy decides that she has different plans. She desperately needs to escape her life, her responsibilities and her brother's recent death. A strange turn of events lands Cassidy in a precarious situation with her best friend, her family, a handsy manager at a bar and a sexy musician. Cassidy's idea of a carefree summer quickly morphs into something else that she isn't quite ready for.

I am not a big fan of novellas. I don't understand this new craze that seems to be spreading like wildfire in the writing world. Why would you want to write a full length book just to decide to break it into three different sections. I'm not an author, so maybe you have to be in that club to understand the motivations behind that kind of decision. Anyhow ... When I found out that Edgewood's three novellas were being put into one book, I was all for it. I was really interested in the summary and I thought that it would be something fun to read.

I'm glad that I did pick this one up and while I found it a little eye-roll worthy at times, it was a good book that I enjoyed. I don't know that I would read it again, but I enjoyed it this time. I found the characters to be pretty endearing, mostly Gage ... I thought that he was perfect and behaved exactly how I would expect a guy in his situation to act. My heart broke for him a little bit at the end and that made me love him even more. Riley Edgewood can construct some pretty amazing characters. Funnily enough, I didn't like the main character as much as I liked Gage and that doesn't happen very often. Cassidy just felt shallow and fake to me throughout most of the book and it wasn't interesting to read. Her interactions with the other characters was interesting enough to keep me hooked though.

All of the twists and turns within these pages was nice. I didn't expect a lot of the things that ended up happening, which is refreshing. But some of the scenes were a little ... much. Now, I'm not friends with someone in a massive band and I have no clue what goes on back stage but ... damn. Some of the stuff with the band just seemed so far fetched. But what the hell do I know. Anyhow.

I probably won't read this one again but I might pick something up by this author again. For the most part, I liked her writing style and a lot of her characters.